Mao Keji | मुखर्जी
In March, a wave of Western op-eds argued, with great confidence, that China would be the biggest operational loser outside the Islamic Republic itself. The logic sounded tidy at the time: Beijing was Iran’s top oil customer, a large share of China’s crude moved through the Strait of Hormuz, and a U.S.-Israeli war would therefore hit China’s energy security first. Reality ran in the opposite direction. China was not crippled. More striking still, it emerged as the world’s first oil “swing importer.”If the 1973 supply shock minted the term “Arab oil weapon,” the 2026 U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has presented the “Chinese oil shield.” By drawing down stockpiles, throttling imports, and absorbing a disruption that many assumed would floor the world’s largest crude buyer, China single-handedly smoothed out a large supply shock in a way that was unthinkable only half a year ago. The strategic implication is larger than Iran. China is far less vulnerable than previously thought to an oil embargo enforced by naval blockade. That is a paradigm shift if conflict ever breaks out over Taiwan. The old assumption was that Washington could choke Beijing by closing sea lanes. The past six months suggest the opposite: China prepared for exactly this kind of shock, and when the shock arrived, it was other countries that felt it first. These analyses did not merely overstate the damage to China. They inverted the result. The simplest proof is still the best one: read those March pieces again, then look at the market. https://www.wsj.com/opinion/china-has-a-lot-to-lose-in-the-u-s-israel-war-on-iran-a8773318